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How to get rid of web advertising


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#1 Koopa

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Posted 28 May 2007 - 10:17 AM

I'll leave it up to you whether it's "allowed" or not to remove adverts from web pages. Sure, if everyone did it the ad sites would go out of business ... and with them the sites that are paid for by advertising. That aside, here's some ways to remove those annoying ads, popups and so on ...


Firefox users:
Installation Get Adblock plus. (click on Installation at the top then on Install .... You can do this even as normal user, you don't need admin rights.
( If Firefox doesn't allow you to install the link, right-click the install link and choose "save link as". Save it (it's an .xpi file) on your desktop. Then open Tools/Add-ons in firefox and drag the XPI file into the new window that appears.)

Blocking a site
Go to tools/Adblock plus. Click "add filter" and enter the name of the site in the box.

Opera users:
There's nothing to install - site blocking is built in.
Blocking a site
1. Go to tools/preferences and open the advanced tab.
2. Click on "content" then on the "blocked content" button that appears.
3. Add the site you want to block.

How to block an ad
Find the source
If you see an ad you don't like, first find out where it came from. Adblock is easiest to use: Just click the adblock icon and a list of all images and scripts on the current page will pop up. You can even go through the list and it'll highlight the image currently selected. You can also just right-click the image and choose "adblock image ...".
Opera users can right-click an image and choose "copy image address", or right-click the page and choose block content.

Block the whole site
Don't block the specific ad though - rather block the whole ad site. Every time you visit a page, chances are the ad will be different - but from the same site. For instance, if you see an ad with an address like
www.adsite.com/images/ads/012345.gif
you'll want to block all of "adsite.com". In both cases (Adblock/firefox and Opera) there's a * symbol that means "everything". So cut off the address after the first / and put a * in: for instance
www.adsite.com/*
is what you'd add to the block list.

HTML popups
This is another way of a site generating popup windows. It is also the easiest to block: In firefox, Tools/Options, Content then tick "block popups". In Opera, press F12 and select the block option you want.

Java script ads and popups
Javascript is pretty much the only thing that can cause popups in firefox, and quite annoying ones too like a dialog box that appears telling you your computer is infected with spyware and would you please download our free program to remove it. If you do that, you're bound to have spyware on afterwards.
Blocking javascript
Adblock users once again just click on the icon, find any "script" entries and block the respective sites. Opera users can try View/source and search for "script" ... but it's a bit harder.
Turning off javascript entirely
This always works but you might lose some functions on some websites too. In firefox, choose Tools/Options, Content and take out the javascript checkbox. In Opera, just press F12 and there's your javascript checkbox.

Blocking with your Firewall
If you have a firewall on your home computer (and I hope you do!) then check the settings, most of them have an option to block certain sites too. Some antivirus/firewall products come with a popup blocker too.

EDIT : To block the ads on PureZC, try blocking all of "adbrite.com". icon_wink.gif

This isn't complete yet ... feel free to add or comment. Things I still need:
- A better way of finding scripts in Opera
- The whole thing for Internet Explorer
Any contributions are welcome. I'll edit this as I improve it.

#2 The Satellite

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Posted 04 June 2007 - 11:19 AM

And thanks to Stungun, IE users can block them, as well.

Internet Explorer users:
Go to Tools->Internet Options. Open the Security tab. Click Trusted Sites and then click Sites. Add http://www.purezc.com/ to the list. Close that, and then click Custom Level... Scroll the list of options until you come to Scripting. Under Active Scripting, click Disable. Click Ok, and now, PureZC is free of ads and runs much faster! Though you'll have to type in the coding yourself, but that's a small price to pay for no ads.

These instructions are paraphrased instructions that Stungun gave out.

Edited by The Satellite, 02 July 2007 - 03:37 PM.


#3 Deepfreeze

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Posted 07 July 2007 - 12:11 PM

Konqueror is fairly simple.

1. Download a list or a few from this page (easylist alone gets most ads)
2. Go to settings>configure konqueror and click on "adblock filters" on the left. check the enabled box, and hit import, find the list you just downloaded.
3. Delete the lines that start with '!' (these are comments, and they may or may not do anything, but it's probably best to be safe. konqueror uses adblock, not adblock plus, so it may try to read them and slow things down)

Note that the lists on that page are subscriptions. It's probably best to update them every month or so. One could probably do it with a script, if one so desired. I'll post if I ever write one.

Edited by Deepfreeze, 07 July 2007 - 12:11 PM.


#4 Koopa

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 11:35 AM

Here's another solution for the standard Windows / IE users.

1. Log in with an administrator account.
2. Go to your windows folder\system32\drivers\etc (The usual windows folder is c:\windows.)
3. Open the file hosts in notepad or any other text editor. Note. : NT- or XP- systems will require you to have admin rights to save changes to it, hence 1.
4. Add these lines. Save and restart.

CODE

127.0.0.1 adbrite.com
127.0.0.1 ads.adbrite.com


Your computer will now behave as if adbrite did not exist.

#5 Koopa

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Posted 02 January 2008 - 01:29 PM

I figure an introduction to Firefox / Adblock plus would be useful here. (Excuse the double bump)

1. Getting Adblock Plus
The official site is http://adblockplus.org/en/installation, click the "Install" link there when you're running firefox. It's a file of type ".xpi" and firefox loads it automatically.
For more firefox extensions, go to ... oh God, I'm in it for advertising as well now ... https://addons.mozil.../en-US/firefox/. They're installed the same way, by clicking the install button from firefox.

2. The Installation
When you've clicked the install now button, a window comes up asking you to confirm and with a three-second countdown before you can accept. (This is a security feature.) If for some reason the button does not become available, click in another window and then back (happened to me before). Note : Even with a restricted account, you CAN install add-ons - they're saved for your username only.

3. Using Adblock Plus
Adblock plus shows itself in an ABP on a stop sign icon, both in your button bar and in the status bar. Tools/Adblock plus also goes to the settings.
Your main key to blocking ads is the settings window, or "Preferences" in the drop-down menu on the toolbar icon (the little arrowhead to the right).
Incidentally, the "Open blockable items" creates a list of all images/scripts/etc. on the current page, and you can go down the list and it'll mark the image in question, so you know which ad is which.

In Preferences, the best to do is just click "Add Filter". Now, you need the site giving the ads from the blockables list. For instance, I see on this page
CODE
http://ads.adbrite.com/mb/text_group.php?sid=185976&zs=3436385f3630

Don't just copy-paste the link, as the image in question changes on each page. Block the whole server, in this case simply typing
CODE
adbrite
into the "Add filter".

It's a testament to the efficiency of adblock and the number of ads here that my statistics (the number of blocked ads shows in the Preferences window) record no less than 10'193 hits for that filter alone.

4. Some common ad sites you might want to block
For Pure:
  • adbrite
  • #div(ads)
Note : The last one is a bit of an advanced trick, based on the layout of PureZC.

General:
  • yieldmanager
  • tribalfusion
  • doubleclick
  • kontera
  • intellitxt
  • adserver
  • adverts

5. Turning Off Adblock
If for any reason you want adblock off for a moment, either click the icon with the middle mouse button or untick the "enable" box in the menu.

6. Final Words
If you're comfortable with website design, CSS and regular expressions, there's a lot more you can do with ABP - my #div(ads) is an example of that. There's more here.

And here's my really final words : ADBRITE SUCKS.

#6 Mitchfork

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Posted 02 January 2008 - 10:18 PM

Very nice. I know I had trouble setting up adblock, and this guide explains it very clearly.

#7 Link1

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Posted 03 January 2008 - 10:16 AM

You can also try blocking third-party cookies (in IE) by carrying out the following:

1) Go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Privacy.

2) Click the Advanced button (under Settings), select the Override automatic cookie handling checkbox, and under Third-party Cookies click the radio button next to Block.

3) Click Apply then OK, and voila!

NOTE: blocking third-party cookies does NOT affect automatic logins to internet forums.

#8 Nate

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 01:02 AM

Why do this?

The ads help William pay for the hosting.

Things like this bring in less income for the server, etc, and he ends up paying for it all out of his own pocket.

#9 Koopa

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 12:51 PM

Several answers.

1) He gets paid per click on the ad. If you don't click them anyway (and let's face it, do you while browsing the forums?) nothing is lost. If you want to support purezc by randomly clicking a few each day, that's fine too.

2) They're annoying.

3) Some of them at some times were inappropriate for some people and places. I do not want to see porn ads, myself. If your teacher catches you on a forum with lesbians kissing in the corner, you might not be on it much longer. (Yes, I know that would be a stupid teacher. But, welcome to the real world.)

4) For a while, adbrite even served up spyware to some users. It involved pop-ups telling you your computer was infected, and if you clicked ok then it was. I haven't heard anything of that sort recently, but I'll keep ads off because I don't trust adbrite. Not like they gave any warning last time.



#10 Ben

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Posted 17 August 2008 - 12:53 PM

I have attached a CSS style sheet that can be loaded into Apple's Safari browser and Firefox (and some other browsers) that will automatically remove most ads. It is not great at removing Flash ads (I am not exactly sure how to accomplish that better without causing some false positives to be blocked) and it does not block very many popups, but it is lightweight (<4kb) and does get rid of most things. To load the file into a browser, the option to do so is usually located in the advanced tab.

It also does not give feedback when an ad is blocked - the ads will simply not appear if they are. There is also a small chance that some page layouts can be messed up but I have only seen this occur on one or two sites that were geared specifically toward Internet Explorer.

Under OS X, I recommend you copy this file to ~/Users/Home/Library/Safari for best results (e.g. it's easy to find there.) If you don't use Safari then save it wherever you want.

Under Windows save it to wherever is convenient.

Let me know if it works properly in browsers other than Safari, I have not tested it in anything else. I'm still really pretty new to CSS, I've only read a few tutorials.

#11 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 12 September 2008 - 07:58 AM

http://my.opera.com/...ock-for-opera-9

Replaces ALL flash stuff with a simple "play" button so you can easily show what flash you want, when you want. (this is for Opera 9.52)





Installation:
1) Close Opera and unzip 'FlashBlocker.zip' to some place on your harddisk.


2) Copy FlashBlocker.css to your "Styles User" folder. (C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\styles\user\).


3) Copy FlashBlocker.js (and FlashBlocker-white-list.js if needed) to your "UserJS" folder (C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\userjs\). If you don't have this folder then create it


4) Go to Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Content -> JavaScript Options. Add the location of your newly created script directory to the "User JavaScript files".


5) view -> Style -> "Manage Modes" (tick "My Style Sheets") and add the path to FlashBlocker.css in the "Display tab" on the "My Style Sheet".


6) Restart Opera and go to View -> Style -> Flash_Blocker
You may want to test Flash at: <url: http://www.macromedi...re/flash/about/

Edited by franpa, 13 September 2008 - 06:55 AM.


#12 Luquetp14

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 01:16 AM

For all of the modern brands, implementing latest advertisement trends has become important because of the increased competition in this world. I highly suggest using the methods that can generate quality results in less time span. The FB ads and Adwords Management are two of my favorite modes.

#13 Saffith

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Posted 12 December 2018 - 01:38 AM

It's the ads! They've come to take their revenge!
  • Rambly and Russ like this


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